LANCE Armstrong may not be flavour of the month with the French (or even flavour of the century), but if he keeps up this kind of performance he may just be a fixture on our TV screens when he finally unclips himself from the Look Keo race pedals. (picture by AP)
Video blogging from the Giro d'Italia, the three week grand tour cycling race happening at the minute (and where he has been riding into some good form over the last five days of racing BTW) he's also been showing people around his team Astana's facilities and talking to team mates.
And what an easy TV presence he has. Confident, as you'd expect, but funny, quick and at times sincere in his shout outs to people suffering from cancer. Surely, he has to be the new face of world cycling, whether journalists and a section of the Continental cycling public hate him or not.
More importantly he's a monumental improvement on the athletes turned TV 'personalities' getting gigs on the British small screen - Colin Jackson, Katherine Merry, Stephen Parry and James Cracknell are all literal personality black holes proving what is now known in journalism training circles as the Jamie Redknapp Syndrome, check out the last two posts here, it's worth it.
The first rule of the Redknapp Syndrome states simply that just because you have done it doesn't mean you have any talent in explaining it.
Chapeaux Lance, like everything else, he rewrites the rules.
The problem with Jamie Rednapp and his fellow sportmen turned commentators is that they think they know it all. Everytime the idiot comes on I feel like hitting him - I am no big head but I am sure sometimes I know more than he does.
ReplyDeleteFaith, watch Lance, he's a very charismatic presence. Redknapp's media presence is much like his football presence was: conservative, sideways, uninspired and ultimately dull. As he said on Sky about Inesta and Xavi, 'Their heads are on swivels!' And as Bazza Glendinning pointed put on the Guardian, yes it's their necks, you have one too.
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